Does GUITAR matter? 1 pickup in 2 different guitars COMPARISON video!

There are a few difficulties which make this, frankly, a terrible test.

1) you are playing punk. Short chopping chords don't decay, don't ring, don't display single notes or double stops. It's why punk rockers can use cheap guitars without care.
2) you are playing only 3 chords in a small pitch range. Therefore one can't hear the range of tones on the guitar.
3) since you don't ring out notes, there is no way to hear the sustain necessary to compare a floyd rose to a hardtail.
4) Alder and Basswood are pretty close woods, which is why they are used rather interchangeably in strats. So it would be hard to hear the body differences unless all else were the same and the playing used more of the fretboard.
5) your attack is not consistent and interferes with trying to hear the snappiness of the neck wood (maple vs rosewood)
6) on the distortion recordings you have variable settings. They are not all the same recording, so there is a total lack of consistency that gets in the way.

When you have so many variables, (varied playing, altered settings, different woods, different necks, different bridges) it's very difficult to distinguish what is causing hearing differences, and impossible to ascribe which difference is causing it.

That said, I'm assuming Maple, even roasted, will have a harder or snappier attack than Rosewood.
So Guitar A is the Maple and B is the Rosewood.

Two asides, you have 8 distortion clips, not 7, and the snappier distortions are so varied in their recording environment that Number 2 almost sounds like a third guitar in its tone.
None of the A's truly match up well in the distortion set. What did you do to alter the recording so much?

Here's my analysis:

Distortion:
1 B
2 A similar but not like other A's entirely. Not B.
3 A
4 A
5 B
6 A
7 B
8 A

This was recorded much more consistently, except for pick attack:

DI:
1 B
2 A
3 B
4 A
5 B
6 B
7 A
8 A

Quote from Cederick

Answer ONLY in A or B please

Descriptive answers are pointless.

A is dark and B is bright. Or alternatively, A is bright and B is dark. I would have to hear the guitar with you showing me what it sounds like before I can blindly say that this one is darker or this one is bright.

Kind of crazy to guess what guitar is being played without having ever heard it, right?

Here is my A/B results:

I'm absolutely convinced there is not "A" chance that one of the four of you will "B"e able to change any opinions of the other three.

Just about every significant aspect of a guitar's construction has SOME effect on the tone, or the playability (and, that affects the tone...)

Maybe this thread could be merged with the "Real amp vs. Kemper" - that way, there will only be one "thread that never ends".

Quote from Cederick

In other places people say that alder and basswood are HUGE DIFFERENCE. So why would I trust you over them?

You didn't ask me of course, Ceddy, but may I suggest the answer would be, "Because you yourself think so based on your real-world test"? I agree of course, and I didn't expect anything otherwise. As I keep saying, those woods fall into the Ash / Alder / Basswood category as far as I'm concerned, and are much of a muchness tonally.

As for your repeated calls for me to retake the test, c'mon, man - I had to practically lie on the floor to hear the clips well-enough to be able to tell that some were brighter than others (the CrapMac™ speaker is super-low in level and the computer's in the bottom of a rack), so I described them as being brighter or darker. I'm not up to going through that palaver again, so I'll translate my worthless CrapMac™ findings from that post. I'll call, for argument's sake, the brighter tones Guitar A, and the duller ones B as I'm not going to try to guess which is physically which. There can be no doubt they sound slightly-different from each other, but I'm not going to get my knickers in a knot about it. If I had to choose either for a recording, I'd pick one randomly and do a whole lot more with EQ during mixing than the tiny differences between the guitars could possibly poke through.

Again, I'm calling the brighter one "A" and the duller one "B".

Distorted

1. A
2. B
3. A
4. A
5. B
6. A
7. B
8. B

Clean

1. A
2. A
3. B
4. A
5. B
6. A
7. B
8. B

I only did it out of respect for your efforts, Ceddy. As I said, my results will likely be pathetic 'cause of the monitoring issue. I didn't want to redo it, as I said, 'cause I couldn't care less that I can barely tell any differences between two similar woods on a crappy speaker, but again, out of respect for your efforts and the time you've devoted to this, I played the roulette wheel.

Oh, and you asked politely too - "Please guys can you try this blind comparison?" How could I refuse? LOL

IMHO, all we're proving is that two similar-sounding woods sound... similar.

EDIT:
Brother, again, out of respect for you, I re-sat the test... or rather, re-laid-down the test! Please don't make me do it again, mate!

Distorted

1. A (as thats in the video?)
2. B
3. A
4. A
5. B
6. A
7. A
8. B

Clean

1. A
2. A
3. B ?
4. A
5. A
6. B?
7. B ?
8. B

The ? means i cannot tell... On a side note i asked my Girl friend where her tone comes from and she said my fingers

Ash

Deleted due to rude reply

Quote from Cederick

1. Genre doesn't matter AT ALL. Also, it's better to try to have similar playing throughout so there's no variations. I shouldn't have to explain why.

2.It's FOUR chords still doesn't matter.

3. This test is not about sustain.

4. In other places people say that alder and basswood are HUGE DIFFERENCE. So why would I trust you over them?

5. Can't deny this. But then again; why would playing a lot of dynamic tones be prefered as you said Before? I do my best to play consistent, and therefor I dont play a lot of solos and shit that could easily be played differently. I just played the riff as similas as I could at the moment. '

6. Are youseriously accusing me of changing settings between takes to fool the listener???

It may be very hard to distinguish between the takes because the whole wood thing is overblown to pointless proportions

As I've said earlier the AMP and CAB and MIC PLACEMENT is what makes the majority of tone.
Wood and stuff might make a difference but it will never be so much it overshadows the amp, cab and mic placement.

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A note is it's harmonics, so cutting them off too soon doesn't allow the listener all the information. It's like doing a picture ID with the face mostly covered. Different woods alter the overtones, so those need to be heard, not clipped short. I only pointed out "punk" to illustrated chopped chords being the type to cut the tone before it can flower into difference making harmonics. So the attack was what I was able to distinguish most, and that would be the neck wood, not the body.

Also, one can hear harmonics of single or double notes easier than a mess of chords. So variety helps, but single notes are best.
Since your guitars use different bridges, and bridges affect sustain, you made it about sustain if comparing between the 2 guitars. Otherwise, the test should guitars with the same bridge.

If the amp wasn't in one position for A and B with zero changes, not even a chair in the room moved, that may affect the listening environment. Different placements, even slight are huge if they are near the edge of the cone. This isn't a test about Mic Placement, but if the placement is different, then it kind of kills comparisons by ADDING more information that should be there.

I didn't mean you did this intentionally, just pointing it out. And that doesn't mean it's hard to tell A from a B, only that it makes distinguishing body woods difficult.
Also, off-axis mic technique can take out some of the initial attack of a sound source. It's why singers sometimes use it to soften the S, T, B and P's of their vocal attacks.

It's not that it's making things indistinguishable, it that there are so many variables, there is so much more to distinguish. That's why scientific tests offer up as few uncontrollable variables as possible, ideally crafting a test that only allows just one. There are clear differences in those takes. And clear similarities. Which of the groups is Guitar A or B is part of the guess, which is cool.
I participated for the fun of it. But if Guitar A has several differences because of mic placement, it can fool a casual listener over compression. That is, the wildness can cause them to make poor choices, not that the choices are indistinguishable, but instead giving information that fools them. 1 and 2 are Guitar A but they sound different because they are different takes, I might think "one MUST be A and the OTHER B because they clearly are NOT the same" <--- this is the problem of your distortion test.

If I conducted such a test, it would look very different. The only differences would be what is being tested. If the test is about neck wood, the body wood would be the same. As would all the hardware. As would the mic placement, room treatment. Also, the choice of "music" would be separates groups. Fingers vs Pick, with the runs being Single Note, Double Stop, then some maybe Chords, ringing out, not cut off, along the neck to get low /mid/high pitches.

There are some really good bass guitar comparisons on YouTube, ones I looked at were Fender P Bass with Maple neck vs Rosewood of the same year make. Or between different bases, P Bass, Rickenbacker, G&L, etc that are well done this way. (I bought a bass recently, so was listening to a lot of comparisons to make sure of the type of bass I wanted compared to my 4003)

One thing I noticed in neck wood comparisons. Most all showed Rosewood to be softer attack. Maple to have more treble. Slapping really brought this out. There was 1 or two that claimed and recorded them "sounding the same" without slapping. But no videos showed Maple being dark and Rosewood being a softer tone. This is a very telling thing about neck woods. There are instances where playing, environment, choice of music, ringing in the amp, can make 2 guitars sound similar. But no case where, how guitars are expected to diverge on wood type, the can sound the opposite of that. Ideally, if the wood don't matter, all three cases should be present, including them sounding the opposite of convention.

Look forward to your pulling back the curtain! And if you say on the Distortion that 4 and 5 are the same guitar, I'll know you're lying, haha!

Quote from Cederick

This is a Kemper forum, dude, I dont mic up a physical amp I had THE SAME PROFILE on both. I didn't change anything.

Sorry for not doing a test to your specific criteria I did my best with what I have...

Initially I thought that, but then you said " MIC PLACEMENT is what makes the majority of tone" in answer to my critique, so that sounded to me like you mic'd them.

I'm curious then how you recorded such varied guitar takes on the same guitar?
I just did EQ checks on them and they don't match evenly on one of the guitars, but on the other, they align.

Anyway, it's not "my criteria." Its how science all over the world works: Ceteris paribus, where you allow one variable and keep all the other variables constant.